Jessica Nesterak-Berhang and her family gave her father a very special present for his 65th birthday on Sunday.
No ties or fancy gadgets this year. The family decided they would give Thomas ‘‘Tim” Nesterak the Purple Heart medal he never received during the Vietnam War.
Nesterak received his Purple Heart during a surprise ceremony at the Rockville office of U.S. Rep. Christopher Van Hollen Jr. (D-Dist. 8) of Kensington.
During the Vietnam War, 2nd Lt. Nesterak and his platoon were ambushed in the aftermath of the Battle of Hue, one of the bloodiest fights of the war. Nesterak directed his men into safer positions and returned fire when he was shot in the neck. The bullet went through this neck and out of his opposite shoulder. Nesterak briefly recovered and continued to direct his men until a helicopter came to take him to a medical center.
‘‘That was the last I saw of Vietnam,” he said of the helicopter ride to a ship where he was treated for his wounds. ‘‘The surgeon there said, ‘This is the luckiest wound I’ve seen in this war so far.’”
In the 40 years since the battle, he said he never wanted to pursue the medal himself.
‘‘It’s something that I never thought about much when I was discharged,” he said. ‘‘To do anything like that for myself felt like patting myself on the back.”
Nesterak-Berhang, of Kensington, said her father’s humility kept him from personally seeking his Purple Heart. But last holiday season, she decided it was time that he received it.
‘‘We heard the stories growing up,” she said. ‘‘One of his friends, actually, gave him a Purple Heart and he would always say he earned one, but it wasn’t his. I’m just so proud of him.”
She and her husband reached out to Van Hollen in November for help in getting the award, and received good news in January. ‘‘Two days after the birth of our son, we received a letter that said he would get the Purple Heart,” she said.
When Nesterak walked into the building on Friday, he thought he was heading to a marriage ceremony before a weekend of seeing the sights in Washington.
‘‘My husband and I were married in the Bahamas, and Dad always told us that he wasn’t sure if the marriage was legal in the states,” Nesterak-Berhang said. ‘‘I told him the Bahamian consulate called and said our marriage wasn’t legal after all and we had to have a ceremony. He completely bought it.”
‘‘I should have been sharper,” Nesterak said jokingly after the ceremony. ‘‘How could I have believed the Bahamian government story?”
Nesterak, of Bayville, N.J., did receive two Bronze Star Medals, awarded for bravery or acts of merit during war, but no Purple Heart, the award given to servicemen and women who are wounded or killed during battle.
‘‘It brings closure to something that I thought was missing all these years,” he said, looking at the medal. ‘‘Now it’s there and I feel I can close the book on that epic of my life.”
It was a special moment for his daughter as well.
‘‘He speaks so passionately of that day,” she said following the ceremony. ‘‘He first saw the [Vietnam Memorial] only a few years ago. He saw two of the people that died that day and was so touched ... it meant so much to us to see him get this award.”
